Urban Life in Kingston Jamaica by Diane Austin-Broos

Author:Diane Austin-Broos [Austin-Broos, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138894846
Goodreads: 33359602
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

CONFLICT AND DISPUTE IN SELTON TOWN AND VERMOUNT

The explanations and rationalizations that are brought to bear in local disputes very often have wider implications. They reveal how people place themselves in society and how they view their neighbors, their associates and those they count as superior and inferior.1 The possibility of dissemblance or misrepresentation of a true position is minimal. Participants are too deeply and immediately involved to bother about appearances. In areas like Selton Town and Vermount where neighborhood culture is seen to be very much a matter of class, disputes offer a sure index to the course of class debate and to the ingredients of class ideology.

The first two disputes considered here are intraclass disputes. That is, disputes between people of the same class commanding different levels of prestige. The disputes contrast the yard fuss with the social snub. The yard fuss reflects the working class culture of display, the social snub, a case of middle class respectability. The yard fuss also illustrates the continued use of race and color idiom in working class environments. This theme will be elaborated in the chapters to come. Two interclass disputes—one between employer and employee, the other between party group leader and party group member—which show private and political patronage at work are also analyzed.

Along with the intraclass disputes, these second two disputes illustrate the major principles of disputation between people of unequal power in the neighborhood. Positions are legitimized or challenged in terms of education or misappropriated wealth. These principles in neighborhood disputes assume class as the source of power in social and political life.

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